SIDEBAR

The Rosedene Avenue centre on the Mountain brow provides transitional housing for women for up to a year. The women staying there have already been through the shelter system because of violence, abuse, addiction or homelessness.

The emphasis at Honouring the Circle is on helping to move battered, mentally ill and homeless women beyond their crises by recovering through traditional aboriginal teaching and healing.

“It’s really about doing the healing so they can move forward without carrying that trauma they experienced with them,” says interim case manager Shannon Murphy. “We are no longer focusing on crisis intervention (here).”

It’s the perfect place for Debbie, 55, who says she found herself in desperate need of direction and help in a safe and non-judgmental environment.

Debbie, whose last name is withheld to protect her identity, used to be a man before undergoing a sex change. Since becoming a woman, she has suffered tremendous emotional abuse at the hands of male partners.

“I needed a place to just gather my thoughts, to focus,” she said. “I was really stagnant and that’s not good in life. I wasn’t going anywhere.”

Debbie, who had been living at the YWCA, was referred to Honouring the Circle by a friend who once worked with Hamilton police’s victim services. She has been at Honouring the Circle since August “and it’s absolutely amazing. I’ve actually had some positive direction and I’m moving forward.”

Although it’s part of the Native Women’s Centre of Hamilton, Honouring the Circle welcomes all women, says Murphy.

In fact, 14 of the 18 women living there are non-aboriginal, including Debbie, Murphy said. But all have “really embraced our traditional teachings and healing practices.”

Those practices include learning to use the medicine wheel’s spiritual, physical, emotional and mental parts to balance one’s life, says Trish Patrick, a transitional housing support worker with the Native Women’s Centre.

The centre also does smudging — an aboriginal cleansing ceremony using sweet grass, tobacco, sage and cedar — and aboriginal elders often come in to teach, she said.

The centre opened in January in the now defunct New Dawn Centre for refugees. It has 23 rooms, but is expanding to 45, according to Murphy.